Emergency room visits for eating disorders among girls ages 12 to 17 doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new research from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a worrying existing trend that was likely made worse by the stress of living through the prolonged crisis.
“We’re seeing such a high volume of patients needing eating disorder care and worsening in severity,” said Tracy Richmond, a physician and director of the eating disorders program at Boston Children’s Hospital, who was not involved in the study. CDC study. “It feels very clear to those of us who care for adolescents that there is an absolute second pandemic of adolescent mental health needs.”
After a decade of growing concernthe american academy of pediatrics declared a national mental health emergency among children and adolescents in 2021, and the US surgeon general. warned in December of a youth mental health crisis that began to build up before the pandemic.
In 2020, children actually made fewer visits to emergency departments than the year before, a 21% decrease, the CDC report found. In 2021, there was a decrease of 8% compared to 2019.
But the reason for those visits changed dramatically during the first months of the pandemic, with the proportion of emergency mental health visits among children increasing from 24% in children ages 5 to 11 and from 31% in children ages 12 to 12. 17 years. -in age, compared to the previous year.
There are also marked differences in terms of gender.
Among adolescent girls, ages 12 to 17, visits for eating disorders and tics increased in both 2020 and 2021. There were also more visits for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder among adolescent girls in 2021.
other CDC study published the same day found that overall emergency room visits decreased in this same time, falling 51% in 2020, 22% in 2021, and 23% in the first month of 2022, compared to 2019.
Covid-19 remained the predominant reason for emergency room visits among children, particularly among children too young to be vaccinated during the Omicron wave, when visits increased for that age group.
There were also increases in visits related to behavioral health conditions among children ages five to 17, including self-harm, drug intoxications, socioeconomic and psychosocial concerns, and, among adolescents only, symptoms of mental health conditions and substance use.
“The results point to the importance of increased awareness of health problems that could arise due to delayed medical care and increased emotional distress during the pandemic, especially among adolescents,” said Lakshmi Radhakrishnan, a health scientist at the CDC and lead author of both studies.
The reasons for the rise in teen angst are complex and varied, she added, making it hard to pinpoint its cause.
Richmond said inpatient visits to her center have nearly tripled and the need for outpatient care has increased as well.
“As patients come in with higher needs, they come in with a more severe presentation and often with comorbid mental illnesses, such as depression, anxiety, suicidality,” Richmond said.
Possible reasons include changes in routine and schedule, including spending more time at home and new habits around eating and exercise, as well as the stress of living through the pandemic – losing parents and caregivers to the virus or other related causes, see parents worry. about their jobs and their own mental health.
Social isolation can be particularly challenging in adolescence, when it is important for children to establish close relationships with peers and build their own identities.
“They’re meant to be individuating from parents and family, and really be working for themselves and developing their own individuality,” Richmond said. “Instead, in the early parts of the pandemic, they were driven back home and closer to their families.”
The children have also had interruptions in their regular activities and extracurricular interests: sports teams, theater groups, newspapers.
The isolation may have accelerated an existing tendency to spending time on social mediawhere they are flooded with more and more precise algorithms what can drive to the rapid rise in eating disorders.
“As our teens spend more time on social media, we also find that the content offered to them is becoming more and more extreme,” Richmond said.
The tics observed were particularly unusual because children of the same age did not see an increase, and tic disorders tend to be diagnosed at younger ages and are more common in boys than girls.
The rise in tic disorders may also be related to social media, specifically TikTok, where cataloging tics has become its own video genre.
But social media can also provide support and socialization, as well as a creative outlet, for many children, and detailed discussions about the role of social media are very important, said Tyler Black, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and suicide specialist at the BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
“Kids were online and connecting virtually and Snapchat before we used Zoom, they were doing virtual conference calls even before we knew what Zoom was, and they were very ready for online interaction.”
The return to school, for those who attended remotely or on a hybrid schedule, may also have contributed to stress, Black said.
School is a leading cause of stress for kids with anxiety, according to a 2014 study study of the American Psychological Association. The children are about double the odds die by suicide in the United States on school days versus non-school days.
“People naively say things like ‘if we send children back to school, we will restore their mental health.’ And I keep wanting to remind everyone that before the pandemic, we had a lot of concerns about school and kids’ mental health,” Black said, including bullying, racism and a lack of mental health curriculum or services. support for children.
Eating disorders can affect everyone, Richmond said, “all genders, all ages, all socioeconomic groups, all racial and ethnic groups, and I think we’ve seen more of that during the pandemic than ever before.”
Each wave of covid-19 has also brought destabilization, he said.
“There’s just a continual uncertainty and sense of loss: You feel like you’re getting back on your feet, and then a new variant comes along and shakes everything up,” Richmond said. “I think there’s a sense that kids want to control things…and for a lot of them, it just gets out of hand in a way that they didn’t expect.”
